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Wednesday, 21 September 2016

Baba Jaggi Vasudev on Desires

The Buddha has said that we should be desireless and passionless. How should we get rid of anger, lust and hatred? When Gautama talked of desirelessness, he was not unaware that without desire there is no existence. Your wanting to be desireless itself is a big desire. You being desireless means you have no identification with your desires; your desires are only about what is needed. You have no personal identity with the desires that you play with. Without desire, there is no game. But now the desires are no longer about you. It is just the way it's needed for this moment, for this situation. Once you are aware — you are desireless in that sense — there is no karmic bondage. Whatever he does, even if he fights a war, there is no karma for him because he has no desire to do anything like that. It's not coming out of his love for something or hate for something. It is just coming because, simply, that's the way. That is the whole Gita. Krishna is constantly talking about nishkarma — about not performing any karma — but insisting that Arjuna should act. He is talking about the same desirelessness in a different language and context, but it is the same thing. Just accepting everything is desirelessness. Once you are truly accepting what is there, you're not identified with anything. Everything is there the way it is, do whatever you can do about it. That's all there is. You can be deeply involved with everything, but still not be identified with it any more. Don't ever try to fight your passions and desires. The more you fight them, the more they come up like asuras . The Puranas say that when an asura is killed, even if one drop of blood falls on the ground, 1,000 asuras will come out of it. Desires and passions are like that. If you try and fight with them, if you chop them, they'll spill blood and for every drop 100 or 1,000 more desires and passions will come up. Fighting them will be futile. You should just educate your passions; let your desires flow in the right direction.

Your desire, your passion and everything you go through is simply plain energy. It is you who makes it into desire, who makes it into passion, into fear, you make it into anger whatever else you do. May be these things are not in your hands right now. Maybe you are not conscious of them. But, it is you who makes them what they are. Whatever the emotion, whatever the nature of your passion, it is only the effort of your life energies trying to find a deeper foothold into life. It is only trying to enhance the experience of life.

When you desire, desire for the highest in life. Let all your passions be directed to the highest. If you get angry, that also you direct it towards Shiva, or what you hold as the highest — it is OK. Let your passion increase. Channelising it is in your hands. May be when you are angry you can't be loving, suddenly you can't make your anger into love. But anger itself, you direct it.

Anger is tremendous energy, isn't it? Lust is also tremendous energy. Direct it in the right direction, that's all. Every energy that you have, every passion you have, every emotion you have, every thought you have — if it is focused in one direction, the results are very, very quick.